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Carmen Miranda: Bananas is My Business
A film by Helena Solberg and David Meyer
USA/Brazil, 1995, 92 minutes, Color, VHS/35mm/DVD, Subtitled
Order No. W99624
This fascinating film skillfully combines reenactments, interviews with confidants and commentators, and footage from her many films to tell the haunting story of 1940’s superstar Carmen Miranda. Charting Miranda’s transformation from famed Brazilian singer to Hollywood’s first Latina star to independent artist, award-winning Brazilian filmmaker Helena Solberg shows how Miranda’s saga exemplifies contradictions in the relationship between Latin America and the United States that persist today. At the convergence of sexual politics, cultural colonialism, and one woman’s life, this moving film powerfully explores the complex factors behind the image and life of the “Tutti-Frutti Woman," Carmen Miranda.



AWARDS, FESTIVALS, & SCREENINGS


Chicago Film Festival, Best Documentary
Havana International Film Festival, Best Doc
Latin Am. Studies Assoc., Award of Merit in Film

  • Locarno Film Festival
  • Toronto International Film Festival
  • Rotterdam International Film Festival
  • Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival

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QUOTES

    “Complex and probing... As enjoyable as it is thought-provoking...”
    Godfrey Cheshire
    Variety

    “A dazzling array of film clips, recordings, radio broadcasts, newsreel footage, and interviews with friends relatives, and artistic collaborators.”
    Amy Taubin
    The Village Voice

    “It’s obviously excessive to suggest that everything we need to know about concepts like racism, sexism and homophobia lies within Helena Solberg’s provocative, affectionate and intelligent documentary, but not by much.”
    Ken Ringle
    The Washington Post

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Women Make Movies is a multicultural, multiracial, non-profit media arts organization which facilitiates the production, promotion, distribution, and exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women. contact us